The Mystery Off Glen Road (6 page)

“You can’t do that,” Honey objected. “You can’t ride in a skirt, not without a sidesaddle, and we haven’t got one, and even if we did, you wouldn’t know how to cope with it. And we have to exercise the horses or Regan will be furious. He’s furious enough anyway, because now with Fleagle gone, and Tom on his honeymoon, and Miss Trask so busy because Celia’s on her honeymoon, too, he—”

“Oh, please, Honey,” Trixie interrupted. “Don’t go into all those complications. I’ll wear jeans when we exercise the horses after school. Then I’ll do just what you do—dress up for dinner. I’ve got some dresses somewhere, like the one that Moms made me wear to the
wedding breakfast yesterday. They’re in her closet, I think, two or three of them.” She got on her hands and knees and stared at her reflection in the mirror. “Maybe some perfume and lipstick would help. Earrings, too.”

“Oh, definitely,” Honey said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Mother’s away, so we can borrow things like that by the ton. Since you refuse to wear a train and carry a lorgnette, I feel you should go in heavily for makeup. Mascara, eye-shadow, an eyebrow pencil, foundation creams—oh, definitely.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Trixie said crossly. “This is a very serious problem, and although we’re really doing it so Brian can have his jalopy, we can never let him know anything about my diamond ring. So I just have to be convincing when I ask Dad for it.”

“Oh, I know,” Honey cried, stooping to give Trixie a big hug. “As I keep telling you, you’re just about the most generous girl who ever lived. But take my advice, Trixie, the only way you can make it convincing is for you to fall suddenly in love. That’s the way it happens in books. Tomboys suddenly become ladies overnight because some man has come into their life. And,” she added emphatically, “I know just the man you should fall in love with.”

“Oh, no,” Trixie moaned. “Not
Jim
. He’s the only one
who isn’t, as you would say, my full-blooded brother.”

“Don’t be silly,” Honey cried impatiently. “My cousin, Ben Riker, is the only one. You met him when we solved the red trailer mystery, and he was up here last weekend.”

Trixie shuddered. “Even if he is your full-blooded cousin, I can’t stand him. He’s always playing horrible practical jokes.”

“I know,” Honey said soothingly. “He’s simply ghastly, but he doesn’t have to know that you’ve fallen in love with him. He’s going to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with us, so all you have to do is pretend that you’re getting in practice so that you can, well, sort of make him like you when he arrives next week.”

Trixie shuddered again. “Well, if I have to for Brian’s sake, I guess I have to. You know more about these things than I ever will, Honey. You’ll have to coach me. How are you supposed to act when you’re in love?”

“I’m not sure,” Honey admitted. “But in the books, they sort of droop around the way Celia did before Tom finally asked her to marry him. And whenever you answer the phone, you don’t just doodle aimlessly with a pencil. You write your name and Ben’s, and cancel out all the same letters in both names, and then you go
through the letters that are left and say, ‘Love, hate, courtship, marriage.’ But if it doesn’t come out right, you leave out ‘courtship’ so it always ends with both names saying ‘love’ and ‘marriage.’ Right up until the wedding yesterday every piece of paper in the house was covered with Celia’s and Tom’s names, but toward the end all Celia wrote all over everything was simply ‘Mrs. Thomas Delanoy.’ ”

“Oh, woe,” Trixie groaned. “This is much, much more complicated than international intrigue. Do you really, honest and truly, think that if I write ‘Mrs. Benjamin Riker’ all over Moms’s shopping list, it’s going to make Dad take my diamond ring out of the bank? Instead,” she answered her own question, “it’ll probably make him put me into a strait jacket and have me toted off to the looney bin.”

“Oh, don’t be so literal, Trixie,” Honey cried exasperatedly. “You know perfectly well what I mean, but you’d better start practicing now. Just swoon around and murmur to yourself, but loud enough so everybody else can hear you, ‘Oh, Ben, Ben! How can I live until the Thanksgiving holidays?’ ”

Trixie stood up and gritted her teeth. “Blood is thicker than water, and anything for my own full-blooded brother, Brian! But, Honey, I can’t swoon around
in this outfit. Nobody can swoon properly unless she looks a little something like the ‘Lily Maid of Astolat,’ which I definitely don’t.”

At that moment there was a knock on Honey’s bedroom door, and Mart poked his head inside. “I’ve got news for you, Trix,” he said. “The electricity is on, so household chores await you at home.”

Trixie suddenly decided that this was as good a time as any to start trying to convince Mart that she had gone “frail and feminine.”

“Chores?” she asked, buffing her stubby, slightly soiled fingernails against the ragged cuff of her sweater. “Surely you can’t mean anything that might give me dishpan hands?”

Mart stared at her, openmouthed. “Wha-at did you say?” he gasped.

Trixie, trying to ignore her reflection in the mirror so she could imagine herself in a dainty frock, shook her head sorrowfully. “It isn’t that I don’t want to cooperate, you must understand. It’s just that Ben, well, he wouldn’t like it. Ben. Ah, Ben!”

If Mart had had any hair to clutch, he would have clutched it. As it was, he simply clasped his hands above his head and demanded, “Ben who, lamebrain? If you are referring to Benjamin Franklin, I’ve got news for
you. He died before you were born and so couldn’t care less if you have dishpan hands.”

Honey hurried to the rescue. “Trixie’s quite right, Mart,” she said firmly. “Ben wouldn’t like it. I mean, after all, when a girl starts wearing diamond rings, she’s just got to have pretty hands. What I mean is, it’s obvious, you know. Ben Riker and Trixie. It
is
obvious, Mart, isn’t it? I mean, he’s my own full-blooded cousin, and she’s your very own full-blooded sister, so
we
should know, shouldn’t we?”

Mart let out a loud groan. “So far as I am concerned she’s a full-blooded, but very lazy, squaw. And if she doesn’t get down to the family tepee soon and cope with the dust and dishes, I’ll brain her. Not,” he added as he departed, “that she has a brain to be brained.”

Both of the girls listened until his heavy, angry footsteps died away. Then Trixie whirled on Honey with, “Now you’ve done it. No matter what I do or say, Mart will never take me seriously.”

Honey tossed her light-brown hair back from her slim shoulders. “Even if you live to be ninety, Trixie, Mart will never take seriously anything you do or say. You might as well face that here and now, and let him in on the scheme. What I mean is, he adores Brian even more than you do, so he
will
take seriously
the whole business about the diamond ring.”

“Never,” Trixie said defiantly. “Don’t forget that I’ve lived with Mart ever since I was born. He just wouldn’t cooperate, although he might try. He’d laugh his head off at all the wrong moments. Not,” she added as she started for the door, “that he has a head to be laughed off.”

Honey hastily followed her out into the hall and they clung to each other there for a minute, laughing almost hysterically.

“Oh, all right,” Honey finally gulped.
“Don’t
let Mart in on the secret. But mark you my words, O Lily Maid of Astolat, you’ll live to rue the day.”

Trixie said nothing, but as she hurried home she couldn’t help shivering a little. Not so much because it was a cold, crisp fall day, but because she felt in her bones that Honey was right. Every time that she, Trixie, had tried to solve a problem without consulting Mart, they had always ended up in a near-catastrophe because, as it turned out, they had both been working along the same lines but at cross-purposes with each other.

In the warm kitchen at home, Trixie plunged her cold hands into the sinkful of hot sudsy water. Pretty soon she would have to go upstairs and don a dainty frock. The very thought made her shiver again.

Moms and Dad and Brian would certainly look at her with expressions which meant that they thought she had lost her mind. Bobby, of course, wouldn’t notice. It would all be the same to him if she appeared in a gunny sack or a ball gown with a long train.

Mart, however, was something else again. He would not only look at her askance if she dressed for dinner but would make caustic remarks.

Oh, nuts
, Trixie reflected.
Honey’s probably right. I should let Mart in on the secret. But I can’t. There are so many problems involved. He’d be sure to let the cat out of the bag, so Brian would know why I wanted that silly old diamond ring. And if Brian knew, he’d never let me ask Dad to take it out of the bank
.

It was agony, but Trixie somehow did it. She appeared at dinner that evening wearing a red-and-white dotted-swiss Nylon frock, white socks, and black patent leather slippers. She had brushed and dampened her blond curls so that they looked almost as neat as though they had been set by a beauty parlor expert. She had also helped herself to her mother’s hand lotion and toilet water.

The whole thing had been such an effort that she found she couldn’t walk naturally. Instead of racing into the dining-room and sliding into her chair, she moved as stiffly as though she were a puppet controlled by strings.

A feminine Pinocchio, that’s what I am
, she reflected grimly as she marched into the dining-room and sat down.

Nobody said a word for a long minute. Then, as though they, too, were controlled by strings, Trixie’s father and older brothers all, simultaneously, took large sips from their water tumblers. Then Mr. Belden patted his small mustache with his napkin and cleared his throat.

“Good evening,
Miss
Belden,” he said in a voice that Trixie had never heard him use before. He sounded as though he were choking in spite of the water he had gulped. He coughed again. “Haven’t you made a mistake? Our Thanksgiving party does not take place until a week from next Thursday. The twenty-sixth, to be exact, and according to my calendar today is Monday the sixteenth.”

“Oh, Dad.” Trixie waved her hands airily, and wished that her fingernails were not so stubby. “How
can
you be so ridic? This isn’t a party dress. It’s just a very simple little thing Moms found last summer in a bargain basement. But it
is
becoming, isn’t it? I mean, Ben liked it.” She stared down at her plate and was sorry that she hadn’t had time to put mascara on her sandy eyelashes. “Of course, it does need jewelry to set it off, don’t you agree? Just a simple little pin or a necklace or a ring would do it.”

Mart uttered a sound which was identical with the yelp which Reddy emitted whenever Bobby accidentally stepped on his tail. He drained his water glass and wordlessly took it out to the kitchen. Mrs. Belden came through the swinging door at that exact moment and they almost collided. She was carrying a large platter of fried chicken and she set it down on the table mat in
front of her husband’s plate. Then she turned and stared at Trixie with a quizzical expression on her youthful, pretty face.

“My, honey,” she said, “you look nice. I’m so glad you like that dress. But, Trixie dear, jewelry would ruin the effect. Perhaps that strand of seed pearls your Aunt Alicia gave you last Christmas, but nothing else. Where
is
that necklace, Trixie?”

Trixie gulped both air and water. She hadn’t the faintest idea of where that seed pearl necklace was. The fact that she had lost it almost immediately after she received it was one of the reasons why Dad had insisted upon putting her diamond ring in the safety deposit box.

Brian spoke up then. “I know where that necklace is,” he said coldly. “Bobby planted it in the garden last spring so he could grow some pearl bushes. He planted it seed pearl by seed pearl, didn’t you, Bobby?”

Bobby did not deign to reply. He wrinkled his nose at Trixie and said, “You smell funny. Mostly, you smell all nice and sunshiny the way Reddy does after he’s gone swimming in the lake. Now you smell sort of—”

Mart came back through the swinging door then and said, “We know, Bobby. None of us will ever forget the day that you got the flea powder can mixed up with
Mom’s talcum powder. Reddy will never forget it either.” He stopped behind Trixie’s chair and sniffed elaborately. “Yes, Bobby, you’re quite right. She does smell very much the way Reddy did on that unfortunate occasion.”

Trixie, although consumed with the desire to throw a plate at Mart, mentally counted to ten. “ ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ ” she quoted from
Romeo and Juliet
.

Mart groaned and said to Brian, “She’s gone in for
non sequiturs
in a big way, no?”

“Yes,” Brian said succinctly.

Trixie ignored them. “The point is,” she said sweetly, “since I haven’t got a seed pearl necklace, I simply must have that diamond ring Jim gave me. Please, Dad, won’t you get it out of the bank? I mean, Ben is the sophisticated type of boy who expects his date to be at least dressed.” She turned to her mother. “Honestly, Moms, I feel positively naked in this dress without any jewelry.”